Appeal No. 2002-1140
Application No. 08/947,470
Appellants’ Admitted Prior Art (“the APA”), consisting of the “Description of the Related
Art” at pages 1-3 of the specification.
Claims 5 and 15-20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable
over the APA, Deeran, Furukawa, and Bonsall.
We refer to the Final Rejection (Paper No. 14) and the Examiner’s Answer
(Paper No. 17) for a statement of the examiner’s position and to the Brief (Paper No.
16) for appellants’ position with respect to the claims which stand rejected.
OPINION
Appellants assert three “independent grounds” for reversing the rejection before
us, which we will address in turn.
First, appellants argue the examiner has not shown motivation from the prior art
for combining the teachings of the APA and Deeran. According to appellants, the
examiners finding for motivation set forth in the Final Rejection -- to eliminate the cost
associated with producing a separate switch panel -- comes from appellants’ disclosure,
rather than from the APA or Deeran. (Brief at 7-8.)
We note, however, that the APA (specification at 2, lines 15-19) relates that the
greater cost inherent in providing a separate switch panel was known. In any event, the
examiner points to column 2, lines 45-52 of Deeran for a teaching with respect to the
relatively inexpensive production and maintenance of a single-piece touchscreen.
(Answer at 5.) We concur that Deeran would have suggested the improvement over
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